Origins - A Guardian Anthology Read online

  Origins

  The Guardian Anthology

  By

  Jen Finelli

  Welcome

  I’m so glad to see you here, reading with me! I think you’ll have a lovely time, so I don’t want to interrupt you before we get started, but fair warning:

  The stories on the following pages rate about PG-13, with some cursing, occasional violence, and discussion of some difficult themes like mental illness and teen safety. (I counted about six total f-bombs.) I strive to make the Becoming Hero universe accessible to younger, more sheltered teens while still remaining honest to the real struggles less privileged teens and young adults face. There will be no graphic depictions of sex or sexual assault, and I want to avoid triggering anyone with glorified violence, but bad guys talk like bad guys, and you’re not going to hear Luis say, “Oh geez, Carl, I sure do hate how you stopped my evil plan!” You might find some themes make you uncomfortable, but you won’t be traumatized.

  Finally, while the struggles on these pages are based on a conglomerate of real experiences relayed to me by patients, clients, friends, and IRL heroes, all of the people and events inside this anthology are fictional.

  Also, I didn’t beat any puppies while making it.

  Aight? Let’s dive in.

  Table of Contents

  Hierro: Carlos Serra Rivera — Page 3

  The Girl in the Red Hijab: Asia Fareedi — Page 23

  The Man by the River: Skye Yamada-Johnson — Page 41

  Mark of the Beast: Mark O’Donnell — Page 59

  When the Thunder Rolls: Natasha James — Page 73

  Hierro

  Carlos Serra Rivera

  Carl blinked, hoping this was sweat stinging his eyes, or maybe the sun reflecting like a search light off the aluminum roofing. He laid down the sheet of metal, blinking again, as his coworkers flurried around him. Their soaked tank-tops and t-shirts gave way to rippling muscle as they joked, and hammered, and stapled, and tossed cement blocks across the yard like pillows…

  Though Carl was the construction crew's biggest and youngest, suddenly the thin slat of roof he carried weighed too much.

  “Hey 'papi', get over here,” the foreman shouted to Carl, grinning as he borrowed one of Carl's 'Puerto-Rican-isms.'

  “Vale, 'ese'.” Carl tried to tease his Mexican boss back, but his heart wasn't in it. Blink, blink—no, this stinging wasn't sweat. Puñeta. He had to leave before... “I got class in an hour. I better get going after we get this roof up.”

  “You still doing that college thing? We not paying you enough?”

  “Nah, 'mano, you pay fine. I just wanna be an engineer. Build stuff that flies!” Carl heaved his piece of aluminum up again, letting its heat sear his bare shoulder—glad he could still feel that. He struggled to focus on the conversation around him as his vision blurred.

  “But building a shed, man, that's so much cooler than designing a spaceship,” the foreman laughed, waving dramatically at the half-finished structure like a magician unveiling his assistant.

  Carl struggled to chuckle with the foreman. He could laugh. This wouldn't beat him. He yanked the sheet metal against himself, gritting his teeth as his head grew heavy on his neck, and with a grunt of power he dragged his burden through the dry, cracked mud. He could feel the foreman's eyes on him. Did this look difficult? Carl didn't care. He'd put this roof on that shed. Aside, sun. Move, heat.

  “Hey, what's wrong with you? Looks like you re-enacting the Via Dolorosa over there.”

  No. No, this was easy. One step. Next step. No—no, no, the light flared, and dangit—dangit, now he couldn't see at all!

  “Hey, watch it.”

  “Carl, you drunk?”

  Walk in a straight line. Carl felt the shed with his outstretched hand: plastic edges and a wooden frame, warm. He clung to that as his other arm brought the metal sheet the last few inches to let it clang and wobble against the cheap siding as he set it down.

  He'd miss class. He couldn't drive if he couldn't see. So he'd need a ride? Could he find the bus stop? He tried to plan and strategize as his grip softened, and he felt his hand slipping down the side of the shed as his left leg buckled, too. The siding scratched his palm, and he was glad for the pain.

  *

  “Your boss was really worried about you, Carl. The ER doctor didn't have great things to say, either.”

  The neurologist swiveled on his stool, turning away from his ancient-looking computer to face the young man sitting shirtless on the exam table.

  Carl shrugged. “He's a nice guy.”

  “The ER doctor was a woman.”

  “I wasn't talking about her.” Carl smiled as the neurologist stood to have him grip his hand and wiggle his fingers and raise his shoulders. They'd done this physical exam now so many times over the past year that Carl had it memorized like a dance, and they could talk over it without the neurologist giving directions.

  “Nice or not, your boss can't keep you on if we don't get these attacks under control.”

  “He said that?” Carl hadn't had an attack on a construction site before—at least not one anyone noticed before he'd left.

  “No.” The neurologist gripped Carl's shoulders. “I say that.”

  Carl looked up. The neurologist's grey eyes didn't blink. Carl didn't blink either.

  “You could drop something on someone. Fall on someone from a height. Misuse machinery.”

  So he wouldn't carry stuff above people, stand above people, or drive the bulldozer.

  “You've got to take out loans or something. You can't keep working.”

  But Carl kept working.

  *

  “Hey, make sure you drink water, Carl!” A brick flew towards Carl's face. He caught it, set it in its place on the wall in a swath of squicky mortar, and knelt on the scaffold to catch the pile of seven his boss threw up towards him. One of the Paraguayans on the lot had shown them all this much faster, much more dangerous way to lay brick, and Carl wished the foreman wouldn't stand directly under him. Gracias a Dios he finally moved.

  “Don't want you getting another heatstroke.” Sweat gleamed on the foreman's scruff as he climbed the scaffolding to hand Carl a bottle of water and sit down. Carl took it with thanks, wondering if he should correct the foreman. He'd never had heatstroke...

  “How's school?” The foreman asked.

  “Good.” Except for the episode last month where he couldn't see the blackboard. “Lots of math.”

  “Oof, I hated math. My son's very good at that, though.”

  “The high schooler?”

  “Yeah. Juan Carlos. He's smart, but...he's getting a little ...crazy.”

  “Wrong crowd, kind of crazy?”

  The foreman winced. “You think you could come over and meet him? He doesn't need tutoria, but...”

  “Is there a Big Brother program at his school?”

  “Ese, I don't even know what that is.”

  Carl put his hand on the foreman's shoulder. “I'll talk to him. Don't worry.”

  “Vale.” The foreman smiled and shook Carl's hand with a whack on the back. He held his weight there, in Carl's palm, as he began to climb back down the scaffold.

  Carl's grip was weak.

  The foreman's eyes lit with confused curiosity as they met Carl's.

  The foreman didn't have time to look scared as he fell.

  *

  “No, I'm done.”

  “Ese, I'm mad you dropped me, but you're not done.”

  Carl drooped against the tire of the white construction van in the shadow of his coworkers. Carl couldn't even see them, but they didn't know that. He heard the foreman's boots rasp against the curb as someone wrapped electri
cal tape around the broken ankle.

  “You're taking me to the hospital,” the foreman went on under clenched-teeth. “And you're on mescla all next week. No more brick-laying.” Punishment. No one wanted the assistant's job of carrying buckets of mortar back and forth. Carl didn't mind. The strain in your back as you bent to stir and splash the pile of grey mush; the surging pull in your arms as the buckets clinked against each other in your hands—it was tough work, but it made Carl feel powerful. He'd take that any day over what came next.

  He took a deep breath and sucked it up: “I can't take you to the hospital,” he said clearly. “I quit.”

  His coworkers scoffed. “It's that big college ego. He can't make mistakes.”

  “Mescla's not good enough for him.”

  Carl turned his head toward the foreman's voice only. “I didn't have heatstroke before. I have early-onset, treatment-resistant multiple sclerosis. I'm on every medication the neurologist can think of—inmunomoduladores, corticosteroides, 'mano, I'm a walking drug bin, and nada, pero nada me funciona. Each time it's worse, and the attacks are getting closer together and leaving me weaker. I'm not driving you to the hospital because I'm blind right now. I'll go with you, alright, and then they'll give me steroids for a week, and I'll be good for a while, until this happens again and someone gets hurt. I'm not doing that to you anymore. I should have said something.” He repeated: “I'm done.”

  The foreman was quiet for a second.

  “Vale,” he finally said. “Vamanos.”

  *

  “It's not getting better. It's getting worse.”

  Carl didn't want to glare at the neurologist, but he couldn't shut the fire from his eyes the way he could shut his mouth.

  The neurologist sighed. “I'm sorry, I still can't recommend bee sting therapy to you. I don't see a solid clinical trial backing it up. This stuff you've got, it's just print outs from internet forums, just anecdotes, Carl.”

  “A clinical trial is only hundreds of anecdotes that someone watched happen,” said Carl.

  The neurologist opened his mouth to reply—the words seemed to hit him a second later, when he'd already begun talking. He seemed perturbed for a second before he started over without answering Carl's statement.

  “Well, you could sign up for a clinical trial,” he said. “There are plenty of legitimate studies looking for new subjects, and they'd give you experimental treatment for free. You'd be helping other people, too, advancing science—I know you like helping people.” The neurologist sighed. “But that's as crazy as I'm willing to get.”

  Carl didn't answer. He didn't feel like explaining that he'd already looked into all the major studies in the country and he didn't have the money to move near the big cities where they happened.

  The neurologist tried to sound comforting. “You know, as an engineer you can sit all day. Even with MS, you'll be able to live a mostly normal life.”

  “I can't pay for engineering school if I can't work.”

  “How were you planning on paying for bee sting therapy? That's expensive.”

  “By working.” Carl rubbed his face in his palms, realizing now the flaw in his own cure. Wow, he was stuck.

  “Don't you have parents to help you out? Isn't family some big deal in your culture?”

  Carl smiled wryly. “My parents need my help just to get by. I'm not their only child.”

  “And financial aid?”

  “Parents have to be able to cosign loans. Mine can't, and with my grades and this—condition—I can't guarantee I can even work to pay loans back in the future. The cost would fall back on my parents, along with my medical bills...They'd never make it.”

  The neurologist's mouth drew a thin-lipped line. He leaned back on his stool, slate eyes unchanged, but suddenly Carl saw in him a very weak, very tired old man, bowing in the face of the disease, a fighter taken prisoner.

  Carl gave him a break: “Give me the websites for those clinical trials, and I'll be out of your hair.”

  “Alright.” The neurologist scribbled with fury, as if taking out his powerlessness on the prescription pad. “Keep taking your meds in the meantime.”

  “Sure.” Carl took the paper and left the room without a backward glance. He'd be back, but only for the doctor's sake. This was as far as the old man took him.

  *

  A roar burst past the thumping base and tinkling Latin synths pounding the tiny apartment door. Friggin' crazy. James threw aside his pop-sci magazine as he pounded on his housemate's door.

  “Hey Carl, keep it down!”

  The door opened, and Carlos poked his smiling face out.

  “Hey, what the crap's going on in there?” James asked.

  “Sorry, I stubbed my toe. Listening to some Christian Reggaeton!”

  “Didn't know that existed.”

  “Me neither. It's pretty good.”

  “Well, get some headphones in, because I don't need anyone yelling at me about Jesus in Spanish right now.”

  “You kidding? We could all use that.”

  James glared at the sweaty face beaming at him. “Carl.”

  “Okay, okay, I'll turn it down. Sorry.”

  The door shut, and James sat back down with his magazine.

  What now, hammering? Metal on metal—then, the squeaking of a screw against more metal. Man, what was with this guy?

  “Carl!” James yelled. “Carlos!”

  But Carlos didn't answer.

  *

  Todo lo puedo

  Todo todo puedo...

  The music thumped in Carl's headphones like punches against the panic. Carl rolled out his weak shoulder and sucked in his breath, holding back the next roar surging through him. Oh, he felt it. He felt it locking him inside a weak, incapable form, shriveling his world into the volume of a wheelchair, and he hated—he hated—!

  Todo lo puedo

  Todo todo puedo...

  His arms still hadn't recovered from the last attack, and he saw his brightly-lit room wreathed in a dim fuzzy grey. His eyelids ached as if he'd been awake for years, even though he'd just taken a two-hour nap; sweat drenched his clothes even though he'd only fastened together three bends of metal.

  He sucked.

  No. No, be patient. Be patient with yourself. Please, be patient, he preached to his mind. Cling to that joy. Focus on the next step. Healthy thoughts—not repression, not avoidance, just letting each stressful fear roll over him as he responded with the truth. He was weak? God was strong, and God would help him.

  Carl was taking a robotics class, and he'd read some of the latest prosthetics research. They had computer chips now that could hook into a man's nervous system to wire his commands into motors in a prosthetic arm, and it worked the other way, too: one soldier said with this robotic arm he felt his wife's touch for the first time since the war. Carl's nerves couldn't carry information like before because of his immune system attacking his myelin sheaths, and his meds weren't stopping the onslaught—but what if something else could carry his signals? Like an outside prosthetic he could wear. It got better: if that worked, if he could make a chip that controlled pistons and gears to move his body for him, maybe then later he could replace that with version 2.0, with another chip to hook his brain directly into his muscles, to keep them from atrophying, and maybe then to his eyes...replace his whole nervous system. It wasn't a cure, but it was a solution while he waited for one.

  Okay, stop. He couldn't hook a wire into his eyes. This was stupid!

  Carl's teeth gritted.

  He didn't want to go blind! He didn't! The scream rose from his chest, and try as he might to stop it in his throat, to clench his hands and fold the noise back into thought, it was coming. Coming like the disease. What was this, even? A metal bracelet he'd spent three hours bending? Armor against his terror of the weakness closing in? Pathetic! Weak!

  “Armor isn't for the weak, it's for the smart,” Carl growled. This mood would pass. It was part of the disease. Multiple sclerosis s
tarted from the inside, from his brain, his eyes, his shoulders, and worked out to the edges. He was fine. He was...

  Todo lo puedo

  Todo todo puedo

  Todo lo puedo en El quien me fortalece

  Mesias fortalece...

  A new rhythm interrupted his thoughts, and Carl focused on that added drum and the husky shouting vocal hook as he began laying out a wiring scheme for his armor.

  *

  “My dad told me you'd be coming.”

  The foreman's kid was actually pretty tall—a thin fourteen-year-old, wiry like his dad, with three stripes shaved into the side of his head and a trendy superhero t-shirt to match. He smiled uncomfortably as Carl shook his hand.

  “We're goin' to the park, or whatever? Where's your car?”

  “Car?” Carl laughed. “The park's like four blocks from your house. We're walking, papi.”

  “Aw man.”

  Carl didn't answer the kid's complaint. He didn't have a car, and anyway he wouldn't drive 'til he knew he'd be attack-free. He put his hands in his pockets and waited, glancing around the simple beige living room while Juan Carlos got his shoes. Smells of cilantro, garlic, and something like cumin hung in the air. Ten people lived in this one-story, four-room house—cozy, safe, and clean.

  But outside there were bars on the windows. They locked two deadbolts on the way out.

  The kid kind of avoided Carl's questions. What he wanted to do when he finished school, what kind of stuff he liked in his free time—Carl watched Juan Carlos' small shoulders hunch further and further as he looked away down the rows of one-story houses and rusted trailers lining the narrow street.

  “You just want to get this over with, huh,” Carl smiled.

  “I guess.”

  “I think any time your parents want you to meet someone it's bound to be a weird time.” Carl pulled a flier out of his pocket. “I signed up for the Big Brother program at your school so you can kinda get credit for hanging out with me. We can pretend we met there, if that's less weird.”